Question

I am trying to simply update a span tag usign the following method…

<script type="text/javascript">

document.getElementById("myspan").innerHTML="newtext";  

</script>

<span id="myspan"> hereismytext </span>

But i am getting the following error:

document.getElementById(“myspan”) is null

Any ideas as to what is causing this?

Cheers

Rich

Answer 1

That is because you need to add that javascript after the element (the element has to be first created in DOM for the javascript to see it):

<span id="myspan"> hereismytext </span>
<script type="text/javascript">
    document.getElementById("myspan").innerHTML="newtext";  
</script>

Or use window.onload:

<script type="text/javascript">
    window.onload = function(){
        document.getElementById("myspan").innerHTML="newtext";  
    }
</script>
<span id="myspan"> hereismytext </span>